What Happens When You're Alive
by Ace of Emeralds
Summary: Series of unrelated one-shots. Sherlock/John friendship and sometimes romance. Ranging from shameless fluff to angst.
1. Flowers for a ghost Only Human

**A/N: Yes, I'm evil to start with such a sad, depressing one shot. They will get fluffier, I promise. This just popped into my head because I love "Flowers for a Ghost" It's by Thriving Ivory. If you don't know it, you should look it up, it's amazing. But I heard it and for some strange reason, I thought of Sherlock? My brain makes the oddest connections.**

**I'll be continuing this sometime soon with some less tear-inducing one shots. Yay! Review, please? Honest, it makes me very happy. **

**I own nothing. **

_Sherlock fired, watching Moriarty's face twist into an expression of shock as the bullet hurtled toward the explosives._

"_Sherlock," John yelled, jumping to his feet and, with a strength he had never exhibited before, pushing his friend into the pool. _

_Sherlock hit the water and sunk quickly, limbs flailing, trying to get back to the surface and back to his flatmate._

_His eyes stung with the chlorine in the pool and his lungs were filling with water. "John," he tried to gasp out, mouthing the name. "John!"_

_He looked around, fervently hoping that he'd had time to jump into the pool and out of harm's way. Sherlock couldn't see him. _

_He had caught the full force of the blast. Sherlock's mind went into overdrive, desperately trying to find a way that John could have survived the explosion that he had caused._

_Sherlock's wild thrashing finally paid off and he broke the surface of the water. He grabbed frantically onto the side of the pool, coughed and breathed in a lungful of air before choking out his friend's name again. _

"_John!" His eyes scanned the wreckage of the room and, a minute later, spotted John's body, mangled and clearly dead. _

_Sherlock laid his head on the side of the pool in defeat. Really, the body was only the clinching evidence. He had known that there was no way John could have survived._

_But that didn't stop him from breathing out his name one more time, as if sheer willpower could bring John Watson back from the dead._

"_John…"  
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Sherlock's eyes opened and he found himself on the couch in 221B, drenched in sweat and feeling as though his stomach had been twisted into knots.

XxXxXxXx

Several minutes later, Sherlock was in a cab. "Highgate, West Cemetery," he said, wincing slightly at the words. The cabbie nodded and pulled away from the curb.

Sherlock sat silent the entire ride, brooding as he so often did; feeling the lack of someone to pull him out of his silence with unnecessary questions or remarks.

He had deemed these interruptions annoying at the time but now he almost missed them.

"Here we are, mate. Pay up," the cabbie said in a bright, cheerful voice. He winced again at the tone and threw some money in the direction of the voice, not paying attention to the amount.

He slid out of the car and slammed the door on the cabbie's protests of "But that's too much!"

Sherlock walked briskly, coat billowing out behind him impressively. His breath in the cold air looked like clouds of mist.

He passed impressive statues and wreaths and tombs that looked like they came from a horror movie set in the 1800's. He half expected green-tinted hands to burst up through the ground and grab at his ankles.

He stopped suddenly in front of a plain gravestone surrounded by flowers, all in the process of wilting.

John Watson. Sherlock shook his head. John Watson and his good intentions. Mycroft had once said that John would make him better or worse than ever.

Sherlock wasn't precisely sure what he was now. Better or worse, did it really matter? It was all subjective.

And Sherlock had never pretended to be a good man. He probably never would be, now that John was gone.

But for some reason, John had wanted to help the seemingly emotionless genius. His good intentions were misplaced.

Now that he was dead, Sherlock was only left thinking about the things he hadn't mentioned. Some he knew he couldn't have told him but some he wished he had.

He looked at the flowers littered around his friend's grave. He couldn't help wondering who would bring him flowers when he died.

No one. That was the answer and Sherlock had always known it, he had even been proud of it.

Sherlock saw his detachment as strength but when John had waltzed into his life, he had wanted, just for a few months, to have someone who would remember him fondly. Specifically; John.

And he missed him, god damn it! He wasn't meant to miss him but he did.

He missed the sheepish grin, the sandy hair, the concern and kindness and quick thinking that made up his friend.

Sherlock would wake up in the morning and make two cups of tea, forgetting for a moment that only one would be drunk. He would start to text John during his work hours before realizing that he was no longer on the receiving end.

There was no one to make sure he ate at least once a day and slept every once in a while. As much as the fiercely independent detective hated to admit it, he really did need someone to take care of him.

He never wanted anyone to take care of him, like he was a child that needed minding. That was why he rebuffed Mycroft's many attempts at helping him.

But he had wanted John there because he was completely and utterly himself and somehow, in some twisted way, he had been perfect for him.

So, he reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He placed it on the grave and stood staring for a moment. It was the skull that always sat on the mantel.

He remembered telling John that he was filling in for his skull the first time they were on a case together.

If he couldn't have his doctor back, he didn't want anyone to talk to. Was it normal? No. Would John have approved? Quite possibly not, but it was the only way of expressing what he was feeling that he had left.

He couldn't deduce his way out of the grief because there was nothing to deduce. John was dead and he was hurting.

He had thought he was impervious to emotion; he had deleted the thoughts and feelings that had kept popping up in his mind whenever John was near.

It had not worked.

So Sherlock walked away, hoping that he would find a way that clicked and work his way out of this _emotion. _

No one ever saw the sociopath shedding tears that he really shouldn't have been capable of. They slid down his pale, ice cold cheeks and fell to the ground in the silent graveyard.

He wasn't "normal" or decent or in any way "good".

But in the end he was only human and humans hurt.

XxXxXxXx

_You disappear with all your good intentions_

_And all I am is all I could not mention_

_Like who will bring me flowers when it's over_

_And who will give me comfort when it's cold_

_And who will I belong to when the day just won't give in_

_And who will tell me where it ends and how it all began _

_Don't ever say goodbye_

_I said, I'm only human_


	2. For all I know

**Yes. Um, no idea where this came from. For some reason, my brain liked the idea of Sherlock having a college girlfriend? I don't even know. As a general rule, I think that Sherlock is asexual but romantically in love with John but, for the purposes of this fanfiction, he's just going to be exasperated with sexuality in general, okay? Okay.**

**Disclaimers: I own nothing.**

**Reviews are love.**

When Sherlock Holmes was twenty-three, he had a girlfriend.

Granted, she initiated the relationship. She simply marched up to him one day and told him that anyone with eyes could see that he was attracted to her, that she was intelligent enough so as not to be a complete bore to him and that she was at a complete loss to explain why he hadn't asked her out yet.

So, Sherlock asked her out. He was intrigued by the girl who was almost more direct than he was, if much kinder.

Her name was Alyssa.

She had short, wavy blonde hair and mint-green eyes. Sherlock had expected to be able to tolerate her, maybe even like her. He did not expect to fall in love with her.

And for all he knows, he didn't. Sherlock didn't pretend to know what love was. He was a self-diagnosed sociopath but he had his reasons for this belief. He didn't really understand emotions. He felt things, sure enough but he could never really determine what he was feeling.

He couldn't tell the difference between sadness and longing, love and affection. So he branded himself as different and not to be approached because he was afraid of learning what it really was like to feel something.

But Alyssa didn't notice the clear red flags. She was carefree and untouchable and though god only knows why, she wanted to spend her time with the sarcastic, almost superhuman genius who cut people down just by being in the same room with him.

Sherlock became accustomed to having her around. He grew to like all her little quirks and habits; how she would swat his arm when he said something offensive, her quiet little giggle, her love for science fiction, Chinese food and brownie batter ice cream (something Sherlock would always refuse to touch on principle) and the way she would stare at him, not saying anything, when he was in one of his moods and yelled out all of her most painful secrets at her.

One day, on a whim and because it was the sort of thing people always seemed to do in movies, he took Alyssa to a river by his parent's house and sat with her, asking her questions about things that he wasn't able to deduce.

They were trivial things and she laughed when he asked but she answered him truthfully, face serious even when her eyes were sparkling with amusement because she understood that Sherlock needed to know everything.

Sherlock still remembers the day she told him that she had been assaulted. Her voice was thick with tears and she asked him to come to the hospital right away because she had suffered serious head trauma and couldn't see.

He immediately got into the black car waiting outside his flat, courtesy of Mycroft, and was driven to the hospital, breaking seven traffic regulations along the way that cameras seemed to mysteriously miss.

Alyssa went into surgery, coming out with her sight but without her spirit. Sherlock found out that the men who beat her in the alleyway had been part of his case; would have left her alone if it wasn't for her association with him.

He waited until Alyssa fell asleep and then left, kissing her forehead lightly. He left a message on her cell phone, letting her know that he was leaving and that he was sorry for what had happened to her. He almost believed it.

Alyssa woke up with tears in her eyes and she didn't know why until she checked her messages. Then she let the tears fall down her cheeks for a good hour before the nurses came to check on her.

Sherlock and Alyssa met two years later on the street in London. "Sherlock? Sherlock Holmes," Alyssa had called out as she saw him walking by.

She caught up to him and said, "Oi, Sherlock. I haven't seen you for two years, how have you been?"

Her hair had grown longer and there was a pronounced scar on her temple from the beating that she had taken two years ago, but otherwise she hadn't changed at all.

They walked around the city for an hour in the rain, talking. Alyssa was married to a man named Alex, for which Sherlock mercilessly mocked her. "No, you _had_ to marry a man whose name began with A, you just _had_ to."

As Sherlock was about to say goodbye, Alyssa said, "I know why you left me. I'm not angry with you, Sherlock, I'm not upset anymore. And I know I'm not going to see you again after this. I just want you to know that I wasn't some heartbroken damsel in distress, okay? Goodbye."

She walked away from him then, high heels clicking on the pavement, hair blowing back in the biting wind. She turned her face upward for just a minute and if Sherlock hadn't known her better he would've said that she was looking at the sky. But he knew that her eyes were closed and that she was feeling the rain on her face.

Sherlock stood for a few seconds, staring after her then turned around and walked off in the opposite direction.

For the next few months, Sherlock kept thinking that he saw her on street corners or in cafes or walking out of buildings. For the next year, he lifted his face upward when it rained and thought of her. And then, he decided not to think of her and not to feel anything for what had happened between them.

After all, he wasn't ever in love with her, was he?

Years later, when John and Sherlock had known each other four years and been together for two, John was rooting about in Sherlock's closet, looking for his laptop, which Sherlock had hidden in a fit of childish boredom.

Instead, he found a picture of Sherlock and a young woman with short blonde hair, hidden away at the bottom of a box of old photographs.

She had her arms around his neck and she was laughing, Sherlock's eyes were serious but a corner of his mouth was lifted in an odd sort of half-smile and his arm was wrapped around her waist.

That night, John held the photo out to Sherlock and asked who the woman was. Sherlock looked up from his computer and his face tightened for a moment before he relaxed and said, "Her name was Alyssa."

John frowned. "Friend of yours?"

"You could say that."

His eyes widened. "No," he said, almost in awe. "What?" Sherlock demanded, looking at John defiantly.

"Sherlock, was she your girlfriend?" Sherlock gave a curt nod and said, "Why is that such a shock to you?"

"Well, I always sort of assumed you… I always thought you were gay. And we're together so my suspicions were sort of confirmed and you had a _girlfriend?_"

Sherlock waved his hand dismissively. "I don't really hold with the idea of confining myself to a label, John. Anyone who doesn't aggravate me and who I have some sort of vague physical attraction to, I can have a relationship with."

"Thanks for the glowing commendation, Sherlock," John said, slightly miffed. Sherlock gave a slight smile. "This, of course, does not apply to you."

John smiled back before his face creased in slight confusion.

"Were you in love with her?" he asked. "Alyssa, I mean."

Sherlock looked at the picture.

"For all I know."


End file.
